


when we give enough of ourselves away we lose sight of who we are and sometimes we call that love and sometimes we call that self-destruction

by birdring (twoif)



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Gen, Introspective Bullshit, Teamwork (is a long hard road), imp is mentioned but never actually appears, totally bogus predictions about who wins S7 Worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 09:37:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10511115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoif/pseuds/birdring
Summary: This is how Kim Hyukkyu was built, one careful piece at a time.In a moment of sheer, inexplicable terror, he thinks:This is the end of the line for us. He'll lose this team too. It'll be torn apart and eaten up by the rest of the LCK rosters, or maybe it will be him that will leave. Another year of learning new teammates, a new support, figuring out the quiet hours of a gaming house, who liked to drink what after a game, who would order soup and who would order chicken, which teammate would let him nap on them and which liked to yell loudly at him from across the room while streaming. Another year wasted, with new burdens to shoulder—listening to analysts tell him how wrong Mata had been for him, deciding if he'd stay with Wonseok or peel away, seeing Kyungho or Dongbin in unfamiliar jackets and falling into familiar patterns with them, just like seeing Gwanhyung or Cheonju in 2015 had been like running along the grooves of a train track that no longer existed.And all for what?he asks himself, panic rising. If even this team failed, if even with this team nothing changed and SKT still won, what else is left for him?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chronoshift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronoshift/gifts).



> This fic begins in summer split and ends past worlds, and as such I've had to make certain "predictions" regarding how things will shake out in LCK and at worlds. These are not my actual predictions and evaluation of the teams in question and should not be taken as my attempt to make my own ESPN power rankings, because god forbid we have more power rankings. Everything in this fic is 100% plot device, though I've tried to make said plot devices as reasonable as possible while still facilitating the story. In other words, please don't roast me on r/lol, and I'm sorry Samsung Galaxy ;;;;;; I do actually believe you can make it to finals again!

It takes a month into the summer split, no beers at all, Sehyeong's crafty goading, and Junsik's second visit to the KT gaming house for someone (Junsik, of course) to bring up the idea. "Let's play a game with Meiko," Junsik says, his snapback pulled low over his face, making him just two bright eyes dancing in half-shadow. "It'll be like old times, only we're here in person."

"What old times," Kyungho snorts. "We never played with all of us—with the hyungs, I mean."

Junsik waves him off. "I'm not counting them," he says, and Sehyeong huffs, "hey," from where he is steadily losing to the arcade machine at Street Fighter. "I meant us—" he gestures to Kyungho, Wonseok, and Hyukkyu, then curves his palm against his cheek to mime a headset. "Remember when you would mute us on chat all the time and we had to ask Kuro-hyung to yell at you?"

"Aish," Kyungho grumbles, already making his way over to his computer. "That was once."

A full split with this incarnation of KT Rolster, and Hyukkyu has finally gotten used to the way this team is a constant roiling sea, always moving from violent emotion to violent action and forcing every bystander to follow their rhythm. Junsik, a moodmaker in any other capacity, is like a tugboat being tossed in their midst; in a blink of the eye, he's bounded halfway across the room to argue with Sehyeong over whether he or Dongbin should have to let Junsik use their computer ("I'm reviewing VODs," Sehyeong says haughtily, while Junsik and Kyungho insist he's just chatting up Dayoon about girls). Wonseok is the only one who notices Hyukkyu biting his lip by the discarded snack table, where one of Junsik's half-drunk sodas is still fizzing. When Wonseok raises an eyebrow, it's almost lost in his glasses and mid-season hair, but Hyukkyu can still tell he's a second away from opening his mouth and saying something cutting. 

"Guys," Hyukkyu croaks, ignoring Wonseok's expression, "let's not?"

Kyungho, hands already busy logging his computer into the client, whips his head back. "Huh?" he says, face screwed up in a stupid look of concentration that Hyukkyu has come to expect before either loud noises or a triple kill, and sometimes both. "What?"

"Let's not," Hyukkyu repeats. "Bother Meiko, I mean."

"Why not?" Junsik whines from where he's pinching Sehyeong's ankles to get him off his chair.

"We've played each other so little since we all ended up on KT," Kyungho complains. "What if he forgets me?"

"Good," Sehyeong mutters, and blinks owlishly when Kyungho rounds on him, hissing. "You guys have a problem," Sehyeong continues, swatting Junsik's hands away as he smirks at Kyungho. "You and PraY and the other one."

Kyungho squints. " _What_ other one?"

"So many rivals for Meiko's attention you can't even keep them straight," Sehyeong says, sighing dramatically, and Dongbin cackles, ruining the pretense he'd been keeping up of not following the conversation. It's enough to draw Junsik's attention to him, and in the end Dongbin's the one unceremoniously dethroned from his computer to make way for Junsik. 

"I don't know what you kids think you're doing," Dongbin teases, folding himself comfortably on the floor next to the snacks. "You have two ADCs and no junglers. What's with this off-meta comp?"

"They'll get Clearlove," Sehyeong suggests just as Kyungho sings out, "Ming Kai, Ming Kai," as if it were a slogan for a new product being advertised on TV.

"He'll be too busy," Hyukkyu tries. Under Junsik's watchful eye and sharp elbow jabs, he's bullied into opening the game client, but only hovers over Tian Ye's summoner ID in chat, trying to delay the inevitable. "Anyway then we'll definitely have too many people for one game."

"I'm just spectating," Junsik announces.

"Then why did I have to give up my seat?" Dongbin hollers, half-exasperated and half-amused.

They don't invite Clearlove, who, as Hyukkyu predicted, is busy in another game. Junsik and Hyukkyu rock-paper-scissors for the ADC role; when Hyukkyu wins, Kyungho pats Junsik mockingly on the shoulder. "Shouldn't have tried to interfere with that botlane partnership," he jokes. "What would Jaewannie have said?"

"'Good riddance, I always wanted to play with Deft instead,'" Junsik retorts.

Hyukkyu snorts despite himself. "No, that's what _you_ would have said."

During the wait for the other team, Tian Ye politely fends off Kyungho's exuberant requests that he sing a Twice song, Sehyeong's ganking of Kyungho's headset which ends in half-trollish, half-serious questions about EDG's botlane strategy, and an appearance by PraY over chat, who is insistent on Meiko leaving this game to join his ("Give me gochu," Jongin hollers, while Beomhyun's laughter filters in tinnily from the background). Hyukkyu stays quiet for the most part, content to chime in occasionally on chat when Junsik insults all of them for being embarrassing. Five minutes in, though, Kyungho half-turns in his chair and squints at Hyukkyu. "Tell him you miss him," Kyungho suggests.

Hyukkyu starts, but hides it, adjusting his headset. "Why would I tell him that?" 

"Don't you miss him? He was your partner for two years, wasn't he?"

"They still talk to each other all the time," Wonseok pipes in. "It's all over Weibo. I'm surprised you don't know. Every move our Deft makes is big news."

"It's not like that," Hyukkyu says hotly, but is lost in Kyungho's loud cackling. 

"Fine, I'll tell him," Kyungho says, over Hyukkyu's annoyed _hyung, don't_. "Meiko," he calls out loudly in English, bold on Discord now that it's someone else's embarrassment at stake. "Meiko, Deft says I love you."

In response, Tian Ye curses at him in a stream of fluent Korean, making everyone, including the distant voices of the rest of EDG in the background, explode into laughter. "Why is he talking like that to his hyung?" Kyungho demands in mock-outrage, while Junsik and Wonseok spam the lobby chat client with streams of "ㅋㅋㅋ." 

"Some hyung you are," Hyukkyu mutters, and swats Kyungho away when he comes in for the neck grab.

With Tian Ye's voice in his ear, Hyukkyu finds his brain rewiring itself, jumping into his memories of his last year with EDG like it's a remade game. Hyukkyu's shotcalls come out in garbled English and simple Chinese, just like he'd never left China, and Wonseok follows suit, eagerly announcing his arrival in a team fight with _wo lai le, wo lai le_ , much to Kyungho's amusement. Even with communication split in three languages, they win their match. Bang is less than impressive in the jungle, but even though they haven't played together for months, Deft and Meiko trash the enemy botlane and together make up almost 100% of the kill participation. To Hyukkyu, the holes in their plays are obvious; the meta and playing in different regions has divided them and forced them to evolve into players that are no longer two halves of the same bloodthirsty person. Once or twice, he feels Mata's absence like a phantom limb, and it stuns him that it's only taken a little over a split for Sehyeong to become a part of him the way only a support can. Still, EDG's Deft and Meiko had been one of the best botlanes in the world, and the synergy is an old sweater Hyukkyu slips on: Tian Ye's positioning, his excited voice calling out for Hyukkyu to fall back, the way he still trusts Hyukkyu whenever Hyukkyu tells him to jump forward. 

When the nexus falls, Kyungho howls, and Wonseok and Junsik laugh at him, _what are you so excited beating these amateurs for_? In the muddled noise and piss-taking, Tian Ye calls out Hyukkyu's name. "We played well," he says in Korean. "Hyukkyu not playing with Mata?"

Hyukkyu shakes his head before he remembers Tian Ye can't see him. "Kyungho- _hyung_ wanted to play with you," he jokes. Then, in English just in case, "With Meiko, play game."

"Mata not good enough?"

"You practice with Zet?" Hyukkyu shoots back. "Practice a lot? Get better?"

"Better," Tian Ye huffs. In Chinese, "Better than you." He pauses. "And what about Hyukkyu?" he asks. "You don't miss me at all?"

In a separate lobby chat window, Wonseok pings Hyukkyu. _i can hear you_ , he types, one word per line, and Hyukkyu can almost feel his exasperation, radiating from the screen. _tell him you miss him before that loud one over there catches a breath and starts eavesdropping._

Across the room, Junsik and Kyungho are exchanging nonsense English phrases in their loud, strangely American accents. _Hey bro, you like California_? Junsik demands, and Kyungho tells him, _yeah bro, California good, all good, you good?_ But Wonseok is right—Kyungho in his day-to-day is an excitable attack dog who will sink his teeth into anything that moves or makes a noise. It's only that Junsik is the toy right now. 

Hyukkyu swallows. He can hear a soft sound over voice chat, and he wonders if that's Tian Ye breathing, steadily, quietly, waiting for Hyukkyu to reach out and say something sincere, to be vulnerable. He's never been good at it; even when he left EDG, the goodbye with Tian Ye had been hard not because it was overly emotional but because he hadn't been able to express any strong emotion at all, and Ming Kai had laughed at him, _you're going to be like that until the end, huh_. He was always the most affectionate towards Tian Ye when Tian Ye wasn't around, bragging about him to Seungbin or defending him to Sehyeong when they were still in China.

"Iko," he says, and hesitates.

"Iko!" Kyungho parrots suddenly, voice cutting in like a slap to the face. "Iko, you good too, I love you!"

The moment is shattered. Hyukkyu presses his lips together and pulls his coat closer around his body, like if he became smaller he could make himself and his embarrassment disappear. "Shut the fuck up, Kyungho," Sehyeong hollers suddenly, "Hyukkyu was trying to say something," while Junsik laughs in little snuffles, bent over in half with his head on Wonseok's shoulder. 

"Kyungho noisy," Tian Ye says in Korean. "Kyungho-hyung, quiet down," he finishes, a passable imitation of Deft before a match, and everyone roars, even Jongin and Beomhyun, who'd jumped back into the voice chat channel just to make fun of Kyungho's plays in the late game. 

Over the noise of Beomhyun mock-lecturing Kyungho and Wonseok trying to get them all focused to queue for another game, Tian Ye calls out, "Hyukkyu?" His words, which have always sounded a little garbled, like he was talking around a mouthful of sticky rice, come out soft and hesitant, the voice of a nervous kid wanting his older brother's approval for a good joke. "You were saying something?" he asks in Korean, and it's a phrase that Hyukkyu's never heard from Tian Ye before. He must have learned it after Hyukkyu left. _With Zet_ , Hyukkyu thinks blankly. _On his team with Scout and Zet, which I am no longer on_. 

"Yeah," Hyukkyu says, mouth dry. "Good game," he tells everyone, and logs off.

 

 

 

 

 

To the surprise of nobody, 2017 turns out to be a hard year. KT Rolster had come out of the gate hot and heavy, but hit their plateau right before the end of spring split, dropping from second place and tanking suddenly into straight losses to everyone but the bottom teams. Sehyeong had an uncharacteristic breakdown, going radio-silent during teamfights and the mid- to late-game no matter how much the coaches yelled at him, which dragged the whole team into a neurotic, messy spiral where Dongin and Kyungho passive-aggressively fought for shot-calling rights and annoyed Wonseok so much he threatened to intentionally kill himself through tower shots in every game.

It took two whole weeks for Sehyeong to return to form as Mata, just in time for KT to whiff spring playoffs and lose out on the opportunity to go to MSI. The team watched the VODs religiously, sometimes two or three times throughout the day, Dongbin, Sehyeong, and Kyungho a noisy, overlapping stream of commentary in the background of Hyukkyu's streams, silent only when they got to the finals and watched SKT raise the cup. Kyungho had his head down through most of the ceremony, thumbs moving rapidly over his phone, and Hyukkyu had thought, it was probably the ex-ROX message group. He imagined Wangho's phone vibrating into the void while SKT Peanut cheered with the rest of his new team, radiant in red under the stage lights. Hyukkyu, too, had drafted messages to Tian Ye and Ming Kai, but hadn't sent them, instead jokingly ripping into Seungbin, who had spent that evening insulting him and Sehyeong in turns.

There are reasons Hyukkyu has come to expect which make every season of pro-gaming difficult: a new team, new teammates, changes to the meta, patches, another year of 14 hours of gaming a day with no rest for the weekends, the gradual creep of his reflexes getting one year older and one year slower. But this year, more than ever before, Hyukkyu feels the burden of his prior lives, which follows him like a cold he can’t shake off. At the start of the summer split, a badly timed patch by Riot trying to balance a newly boosted ADC with a newly downgraded jungle instead ended up nerfing the usability of half the botlane champions and revamping the support role entirely. Hyukkyu spent all of April juggling two ongoing chat conversations, one with Junsik, who was handling the change well, and another with Martin, who wasn't. Through the spring split, EDG had been a rollercoaster: promising dominance in one breath and blowing it completely in the next. Zet, used to playing out of lane assignment and not tied to any particular meta as an ADC, took to the changes in the botlane with delight, but Meiko floundered, prone to poorly drafted champions and inexplicable positioning. Aaron suddenly retired after MSI, and in the dip following, Clearlove was benched, subbed in, then benched again by NoFe when he turned out to be more affected by Aaron's departure than Fireloli. 

In Korea, at least, Hyukkyu is lucky; the ongoing telecom war occupies everyone's minds, and as the newness of spring split wears off into a summer full of expectations of a flashy world championship showdown, Hyukkyu only has to suffer through the old questions given new form: Samsung Blue, Mata, Imp, the ghosts of Season 4. Smeb and Score help deflect part of the spotlight, and it's easy enough for Hyukkyu to hide behind Dongbin and Kyungho's interview personas as they alternate between between charismatic and off-puttingly outrageous.

Tian Ye, on the other hand, is hopeless, his short history exploited by interviewers into the same questions over and over again about Zet vs. Deft—why isn't Zet helping Meiko adapt to the meta like Deft did? Why is their synergy so terrible? Are they even friends? _They have different playstyles, we're still working on communication, we get along_ , he says on a loop so well-trodden Hyukkyu has learned the words in Chinese. Sometimes afterwards, Tian Ye would chat him up, struggling through his ever-improving Korean and Hyukkyu's ever-worsening Chinese, and Hyukkyu would have to be careful to not open the windows during his streams and hope Tian Ye was doing the same in China, so as not to give the Weibo league community any more to talk about than they already had.

"It's hard being so loved," Kyungho says when Hyukkyu slips up and complains during dinner, and Dongbin automatically hits him on the back of the head, making Kyungho holler, "I wasn't talking about me! I was referring to Meiko!"

"Everyone has their own problems. We don't need to project our own onto them," Dongbin says, a smug smile on his face as if he had said something very astute, which, annoyingly, he had. 

"Don't get frustrated," Sehyeong says sagely, his cheeks filled with rice like a squirrel. They're the last ones at the dining room table, and Sehyeong is methodically making his way through a second serving in part, Hyukkyu suspects, so he'll have time alone to needle Hyukkyu. "You've done this dance already, but it's Meiko's first time."

"Samsung wasn't the same thing," Hyukkyu says, annoyed. "We all left."

"Sure, but the questions are the same. 'What's it like with someone new, are you seeing someone else, is the sex the same?'" Sehyeong jokes, and Hyukkyu kicks him in the shin on the way to putting his dirty dishes in the sink.

"Speaking of ex-boyfriends," Sehyeong says through a mouthful of kimchi.

"Which no one was," Hyukkyu retorts.

Sehyeong continues blithely, "When's the last time you spoke to Seungbin?"

Hyukkyu throws his chopsticks a little harder than necessary into the sink, and is chagrined when he almost snaps one of them against a plate. "A month ago? Sometimes he'll purposefully wait until he sees me in solo queue and then spam me on Skype like I'm ignoring him."

Sehyeong snorts. "He told me that he wasn't talking to me until LGD beat KT at worlds finals or I drop dead from nagging you. Then he blocked me from Skype and WeChat and made Dayoon text me an image of him flipping off the camera." 

Hyukkyu looks over his shoulder, making a face, and he and Sehyeong exchange a look worth a thousand shared memories of Seungbin. When Sehyeong turns his attention back to the table, gathering his dirty dishes now that he's finally done eating, Hyukkyu takes a deep breath and, as nonchalantly as he can manage, asks, "Why'd you bring him up just now anyway?"

"Didn't I say?" Sehyeong glances at Hyukkyu, all fake innocence. He unfolds himself carefully from his seat to join Hyukkyu by the sink. "I thought we were talking about people you had seduced and dumped."

Hyukkyu rears back, stung. "Don't you start too," he says, frowning into his reflection in a dirty bowl of water. "It wasn't like that with me and him either."

"Oh, I know, trust me," Sehyeong says. The smile he gives Hyukkyu isn't really a smile at all, more a display of teeth, and there's a tone to his voice Hyukkyu can't quite identify when he says, "With you, no matter how they try, it's never like _that_ , is it?"

He turns on the faucet, done with the conversation. Hyukkyu, chewing on the inside of his cheek, tries to think of a rejoinder, but there isn't one, and they both know it. Like old married couples or childhood friends, their conversations have stopped being an exchange of statements and are now just a series of emotional actions and reactions that they trade like well-practiced steps in a dance. Hyukkyu knows: that Sehyeong just likes to get a rise out of people sometimes; that he does it the most when he's feeling anxious about something else, doing poorly in practice or overextending three too many times or going up against SKT once again; that he only ever brings up Samsung when he's worried that he'll never live up to that standard again. Hyukkyu gets it, really. For all the anxiety throwing away EDG and Meiko gave him, at least Hyukkyu is a challenger, with plenty of mountain left to scale and conquer in his career. Sehyeong, though, was on the top of that mountain. He can only fall down, and hard.

They don't need to wash the dishes; their housekeeper does it for them. But, with a strangely practiced hand, Sehyeong starts in on the bowls, then the plates, then the silverware. He hands each piece wordlessly to Hyukkyu, who, used to following Sehyeong's lead, has dug up what he thinks are the clean towels meant for drying and has thrown two of them over his shoulder. Side by side, their hands wet with soapy water, mulling over their separate anxieties and coming to no conclusion, they clean out the whole sink. And when Sehyeong looks over at Hyukkyu, triumphant, Hyukkyu thinks, _this man is my support, and I am his partner_ , and realizes, with a shock, that he really means it.

 

 

 

 

 

When Riot had asked KT and Hyukkyu about featuring Deft as the 2017 Legends Rising pick for the LCK, they'd been rejected ("And anyway," Coach Lee reasons, "do they really want another year with our Kyungho wandering around in the background of all their shots?"), but come time for the world championship, nothing can stop them from filming a spotlight on Meiko and EDG. To the surprise of nobody, Riot asks for Deft. A few days before they're scheduled to troop off to Wuhan, Hyukkyu sits down for an interview and they film some b-roll footage of KT, who are in EDG's group. 

The questions, predictably, are about Deft and Meiko's friendship, former botlane partners turned against each other. Hyukkyu demurs with the usual, _Meiko has the potential to be the best support player in the world, he's improved, I'm thankful to EDG_ , but it's not enough for the interviewer, who probes, "But you're good friends, right?" 

Hyukkyu nods, at a loss for saying anything he hasn't already said. 

"How would your relationship to Meiko compare to Mata?" 

"Mata-hyung guides me and teaches me things," Hyukkyu recites dutifully. "With Meiko, it was the other way around."

The interviewer purses her lips, considering him carefully. "Okay," she says with a sigh, waving at the cameraman behind her, "let's end it there." But even after they've wheeled the camera away, she stays seated, surveying Hyukkyu who, unsure if he's dismissed, shifts awkwardly in his elevated chair. Eventually, she sinks back a little and snaps her notebook of questions shut. "Deft- _seonsu_ ," she says, almost off-hand, "you're an unexpectedly detached person, aren't you?"

Hyukkyu stares at her, frozen in place.

"Only, Rekkles, Meiko, Mata, all these other players always talk about you with a lot of warmth," she continues. "But you never bring them up unless someone asks you directly. And even when you do answer, it's very," she flaps her hand over her head airily, "up here. Not very personal." She looks up at him, eyes half-lidded but very bright. "Does it not matter much to you?"

"Are we done with this interview?" he croaks, and gets up before she can say anything more. 

When the film crew leaves, Hyukkyu hits up solo queue and, to his annoyance, loses three straight games. Angry at himself, he ignores a chat message from Martin, and feels bad about it, which only makes him more reluctant to talk to Martin—an unfortunate feedback loop he can't find the end of and instead wallows in, dooming him to yet another loss. He's well and truly on his way to throwing a tantrum when Sehyeong plops cross-legged into the seat next to him. "You're in a mood," he says, giving Hyukkyu a brusque rub on the shoulder.

"Leave me alone," Hyukkyu warns him.

Sehyeong doesn't, of course. Instead he starts up the webcam and, dislodging it from its perch on top of his monitor, holds it in front of his face, like it's a real camcorder. "Hey, Hyukkyu- _yah_ , look at me," he teases. "Tell me what's wrong."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"That's okay," Sehyeong tells him, serene. "We all have to do things we don't want to do. Talk to me." He shifts his voice, makes it higher, all polite speech as he mimics the analyst desk during an MVP interview, "Deft- _seonsu_ , how are you feeling?"

With the camera in front of his face, Sehyeong is a double exposure of the film crew from earlier today, at once familiar and unfamiliar. Wrapping his bad mood around himself more tightly, Hyukkyu crosses his arms and keeps his mouth set in a thin, tight line, smiling meanly at Sehyeong as if daring him to try. But he is not the first, or the second, or even the third willful ADC that Mata has had to break down and unwind. Sehyeong doesn't relent. He readjusts the webcam and scoots closer in his chair. Out of the corner of his eye, Hyukkyu can see the grainy stream on Sehyeong's computer, his own face large and washed out, ephemeral, each image lost to the next. Hyukkyu can hear in his head the echoes of the interviews from this morning: _Are you close with Mata? Do you still miss Imp?_ But like a quiet heartbeat behind it, he also hears the conversations he'd had with Sehyeong before they signed on with KT: _Do you trust me? Don't you trust yourself? Believe me when I say you're the only one I would trust to take me to worlds again._ He uncrosses his arms, rests his hands as fists in his lap, and tries to think. 

"It's just, I didn't ask for all this," he says, then bites his lip.

Sehyeong's one eye that peeks out from behind the webcam levels him with a look, wholly unsympathetic. "Of course you did. That's why you get paid."

"No, not—not being a pro-gamer or coming to KT." He knows he's whining, but who else can he can whine to? Wonseok, maybe, who despite appearances has an even more ruthless streak than Sehyeong, who would probably tell Hyukkyu that it's been three years since 2014 and it's time to grow up. "I never wanted to have all this attention. All these people in my life."

"What, the _fans_?"

"No," Hyukkyu says, frustrated. "Other pro-gamers. If it's not Meiko, then it's Rekkles. If it's not Rekkles, then it's Imp. If it's not Imp, it's someone else from Samsung." 

It is never quiet in the KT gaming house, but with Dongbin and the coaches out getting coffee, Wonseok at his weekly physical therapy appointment, and Kyungho finally bullied into a shower, the computer room is theirs alone for the moment. In the almost-silence, Hyukkyu waits for Sehyeong to laugh, or to say something cutting, _crybaby Deft at it again_. 

Instead, Sehyeong slowly puts the webcam down next to his computer. He doesn't quite meet Hyukkyu's gaze, focused on something just past Hyukkyu, something only he can see. Hyukkyu turns around, just to be sure, but there's nothing there. "Yeah, it sucks," Sehyeong says simply, chin raised, as if he were talking to that person only he can see over Hyukkyu's shoulder. "Sometimes I wake up thinking I cut myself into a million pieces and scattered them across the world. I keep waiting for them to come back to me, and they don't." He takes a deep breath, refocusing on Hyukkyu's face, and gives him a small smile. "Is it like that for you?"

For all that makes their partnering seem effortless, it took years of rearranging, a trumpeted move out of LCK and an equally trumpeted move back in, the dissolution of three teams, and two SKT world championships for Sehyoung to finally end up as Hyukkyu's botlane partner. They'd been members of that storied pair of Samsung sister teams, sure, but that had been about the organization, not them as individuals. They'd certainly never had that many heart-to-hearts; for Hyukkyu, it'd always been Cheonju, Inkyu, Seungbin sometimes over instant messaging especially during the dark times of LPL, and Dayoon, once or twice, because no one could feel awkward around Dayoon. Now that they've been through LCK and LPL and back, Hyukkyu and Wonseok can honestly say they're friends, but Sehyeong and Hyukkyu have never been close, or even comfortable with each other. It's always been harder with Sehyeong, who alternates between purposefully pushing people away for fun and accidentally pushing people away for their own good. 

In 2017, it's been Sehyeong, always the support, who's invested his all in getting to know Hyukkyu, his moves and champions and preferences. _I came to KT and LCK to play with Deft_ , he'd always said, and put in the work to prove it. Hyukkyu's spent a not-insignificant amount of time this year trying to understand Sehyeong too, but there are still times where Sehyeong seems stranger to him than even Faker. Shrouded in incessant commands over the comms during games and acerbic interview answers, Sehyeong's mastered the illusion of seeming transparent. But Hyukkyu's learned from KT Rolster how to separate noise from meaning, that the people who yell the loudest aren't always the ones communicating the most. Sitting across from Sehyeong now, Hyukkyu can't even begin to guess what, or who, Sehyeong is thinking about, and it occurs to him that despite his best intentions he's made Sehyeong his confidante without actually learning anything more about Sehyeong's own anxieties. Was it Seungbin Sehyeong was remembering, the mad dog that always bit the hand that leashed it without ever quite breaking skin? Was it Inkyu, whom Sehyeong followed blithely to China and then abandoned just as blithely? Even Hyeongseok could have been special, a blank page Sehyeong scrawled all over, until there was no way to write his story without giving Sehyeong a lengthy footnote, long after Sehyeong no longer had anything to do with him.

If Deft is Tian Ye's first and Meiko is Hyukkyu's second, then for Sehyeong, there must already be infinite Matas, one each team and teammate could lay claim to. Mata, whom RNG had known as a rock and a teacher; Mata, whom Vici Gaming had known as a rock and a hard place; Mata, whom Samsung White had known as a rock in the paved path of the royal road. And behind it all is Sehyeong, painstakingly laying those rocks one by one, sometimes punching through a wall to leave, sometimes shaving down his edges to fit.

Ashamed, Hyukkyu swallows hard, his mouth dry. "It's like a skin I thought I cast off. And then someone tries to put me back in it, and it doesn't fit anymore. But it still looks like me, so I know it was mine."

Sehyeong grins, squinting his eyes. He reaches over to pat Hyukkyu on both knees, his hands cold but steady as they rest against Hyukkyu. "So, you were the snake all along, not Smeb."

"No way, not me," Hyukkyu jokes as Sehyeong swivels away from him to turn off the webcam. "Remember? It was always Marin."

 

 

 

 

 

In Wuhan, they end up winning against EDG, knocking them out of group stages. Afterwards, decompressing in their practice room, Hyukkyu doesn't remember anything about the postgame, not the awkward half-handshake half-hug he supposedly exchanged with Ming Kai, not shaking Seongmin's hand, not holding Tian Ye and patting him on the shoulder. Weibo immediately posts gifs, sometimes juxtaposed side-by-side with the images from his Samsung Blue days, being comforted by Samsung White. Both of them seem like pictures of someone else. Wonseok laughs, pointing out Hyukkyu's tear-streaked face from 2014. "Meiko didn't cry," Wonseok says, poking Hyukkyu's cheek.

"You raised a better man than you," Sehyeong jokes, peering over. 

"He should have cried," Kyungho grumbles. "It would have made for better video. There's always that one moment in every Legends Rising season."

"Like when you lost at semis last year and they ended with the Tigers disbanding," Sehyeong shoots back, which offends Kyungho so much he has to leave the room. 

Dongbin gets up from where he'd been napping in the corner of the room and wipes his hands on his pants, sighing. "That was uncalled for," he says, tapping Sehyeong on both shoulders as he makes his way to the door.

Sehyeong frowns, shrinking into himself as he crosses his arms. "I'm not going to apologize for telling the truth," he says, sounding contrite already.

"No, just for being an asshole about it," Dongbin says tiredly, and goes off to find Kyungho. 

Hyukkyu waves Wonseok's phone away from his face, but then regrets it when Wonseok shrugs and moves to a chair two computers down, immediately absorbed with texting his girlfriend. He resists the urge to roll his own chair over, put his head on Wonseok's shoulder, and close his eyes, the way he might have done one, even two years ago. Alone with Wonseok and Sehyeong, the two people who know him the best, he still can't say what he's really feeling. _I'm scared_ , he mouths, staring hard at the back of Wonseok's head. _Scared that I feel nothing, that I can't remember Tian Ye's shoulders under my hands, that I don't care anymore_. Scared that nothing will ever hurt him like 2016 still hurts Kyungho. Scared that not even this win moves him, scared that he's numb and hollowed out. 

 

 

 

 

 

And then, at the end of October, in a glorious, nail-biting, teeth-grinding five-game series, KT Rolster loses to SKT T1. 

Well-versed in looking good for the camera in the face of defeat, Dongbin and Kyungho shepherd the team along the graceful loser's path: handshakes with SKT, Kyungho lingering over his time with Wangho and whispering some joke into his ear to make him smile, Sanghyeok's expression strangely stormy and dark as he shakes Kyungho's hand, meditative smiles at a crowd they can't see through the bright lights, and a steady walk off-stage. Once hidden from the cameras, though, Kyungho is the first to lose it, inconsolable despite Dongbin and the coaches' best efforts. Wonseok and Sehyeong hang back, as if embarrassed, and it's Hyukkyu who's frozen between the two camps, neither a former world champion denied a repeat nor the long-time challenger doomed to always fail. 

In a moment of sheer, inexplicable terror, he thinks: _This is the end of the line for us_. He'll lose this team too. It'll be torn apart and eaten up by the rest of the LCK rosters, or maybe it will be him that will leave. Another year of learning new teammates, a new support, figuring out the quiet hours of a gaming house, who liked to drink what after a game, who would order soup and who would order chicken, which teammate would let him nap on them and which liked to yell loudly at him from across the room while streaming. Another year wasted, with new burdens to shoulder—listening to analysts tell him how wrong Mata had been for him, deciding if he'd stay with Wonseok or peel away, seeing Kyungho or Dongbin in unfamiliar jackets and falling into familiar patterns with them, just like seeing Gwanhyung or Cheonju in 2015 had been like running along the grooves of a train track that no longer existed. _And all for what?_ he asks himself, panic rising. If even this team failed, if even with this team nothing changed and SKT still won, what else is left for him? 

Each roster is a blueprint. In December, when Deft went to KT, Hyukkyu had stood in the chalked foundation and watched the house rise under Coach Lee's careful hand, Score like the walls and Smeb like the ceiling, Pawn the pillars in the center and Mata the concrete beneath him, securing him in. When Hyukkyu had gazed at SKT, he'd seen a brick house, already built, mortared and shingled and the windows bright with lights inside. It used to be that nothing hurt Hyukkyu more than the longing to walk into that house, to be warm and secure in the knowledge that he is good, that he will be remembered. But maybe he's stood out in this cold for too long, picking at the broken foundations of other houses. Maybe that's why what hurts him most now is the fear that he'll open his eyes and find that this house, too, was all a dream. That they were only five people standing on a piece of old paper, smudged and ripped, with nothing holding them together.

"Hyung," Hyukkyu says into the room. The response is quick, all three of them turning towards him, Dongbin in the middle of handing Kyungho a glass of water, Kyungho straightening himself up, and Sehyeong jerking awake from where he'd been resting his head against the wall. 

"Are you going to cry too?" Wonseok asks, an apprehensive look on his face. 

"I'm—" Hyukkyu begins.

"There's nothing you did wrong," Kyungho interrupts suddenly. He puts on his glasses and, peering blindly in Hyukkyu's general direction, smiles. "You did great. No one has anything to be sorry about. We left it all out there. Don't have any regrets. I wish I could have—well, never mind. We did great," he repeats, helplessly. Then, his upper lip trembling, "Thank you."

Sehyeong considers him, one corner of his mouth twisted up, both smiling and grimacing. "So uncharacteristic of our Kyungho," he says. "Has he grown up?"

"I bet he copied it from GorillA," Dongbin jokes, but sits down next to Kyungho, an arm around his shoulders, pulling at him until he relents, tilting his head to meet Dongbin's shoulder. Hyukkyu watches, strangely fascinated, as Kyungho turns his face into Dongbin's jacket so that no one can see his red, swollen eyes. "Let this hyung comfort you too," Dongbin says, his voice catching. 

Sehyeong clicks his tongue, then takes a hold of Wonseok and Hyukkyu roughly by their elbows. "Come here," he rasps, and marches all three of them towards Dongbin and Kyungho. Their shoulders meet in a circle, clustered around Kyungho. None of them say anything. Quietly, quietly, for just a second, they stand there, eyes closed, holding on.

 

 

 

 

 

They win the KeSPA Cup a week or so later. SKT uses Blank, Sky, and Profit; KT trashes them like a team possessed, and afterwards, when they're combing their hair and fixing their makeup for the fanmeet, Wonseok mutters, "What is it people say about sequels?" 

"That they show the viability of the franchise," Dongbin says, a hand on the back of Wonseok's neck, both a warning and a soothing touch. "And that KT Rolster will return next year, better and stronger than before."

"Go Dongbin with the PR line," Kyungho says, sounding impressed despite the face he's making. 

"Learn from your best bro, Kyungho- _yah_ ," Coach Jeong sings out, and Hyukkyu hides a smile.

For a few days after, KT Rolster go their separate ways. They see their families, and Hyukkyu and Wonseok even go to Shanghai to film some promotional content for an EDG reunion. Sehyeong falls off the face of the Internet and re-emerges in fantaken photos of him in a bar in Busan with Inkyu, which he denies fervently ( _inkyu who_ , he texts back when Hyukkyu teases him about it). Kyungho and Seohaeng engage in an embarrassing picture contest on Twitter that is ganked and won by Jongik and Beomhyun, and Dayoon sends the ex-Samsung chat group a short video of Jongik and Yeujin shaking their heads as Dongbin and Seohaeng try to smother a drunk Kyungho so that he'll stop singing Big Bang's "Last Dance." But like moths drawn to the memory of a fire, they drift back to the gaming house in groups of three or four, trying to find each other in solo queue so they can gloat about wins or losses in person. No one talks about their contracts, which are all ending, and when they talk about next year, it's nebulous and depersonalized: changes to the meta, buffed champions, old friends abroad. 

Even in the offseason, SKT wins with the big news: Bang announces that he's retiring from professional play and Wolf announces that he's considering a new team or doing something else entirely. Jaewan, who had been so effusive online about Bengi's departure last year, is more lighthearted and sarcastic about his separation from Junsik, and together their SNS profiles are mostly studded with couple shots of their dogs, who have grown attached to each other and don't like change. Privately, Junsik jokes that Deft's place as best ADC in the world is cemented. "I'm doing you a favor," he says, plucking one of Hyukkyu's drumsticks away from his plate. "Leveraging your worth. Maybe SKT will poach you this time."

Hyukkyu takes Junsik's soda away from as revenge. "You are the worst," he informs Junsik for the hundredth time. "Who will I complain to now that you're gone?"

"Rekkles," Junsik says immediately, then dodges the piece of soiled napkin Hyukkyu throws at him. 

"I'm going to retire too," Hyukkyu sulks. "Everyone leaves me. What's the point in staying?"

Junsik laughs. "Come with me and start a team, then. I'll hire Meiko. Jaewon can be his sub. We can poach my topside _dongsaengs_ from SKT. They like me better than Sanghyeok anyway."

"Then what's the point of you retiring?" 

"Beating coach at his own game, of course," Junsik says, eyes glittering.

The announcement dominates their small corner of the world, all over Twitter and giving birth to a handful of Inven memes, but the response at KT is surprisingly sanguine. "It'd be one thing if Faker announced he was leaving SKT," Sehyeong points out. "They've lost a whole botlane before. What do you think we have to do to push kkOma into retirement?" 

"Marriage, if the little peanut's Facebook posts are any indication," Dongbin suggests.

"Coach Choi is married and he's still there," Coach Jeong hollers from the kitchen. "Don't trust that Wangho. He's playing a long con mindgame."

Mostly, the conversation at the KT Rolster house revolves around the All-Star voting results, which Kyungho and Dongbin, too proud to admit they want to go, monitor with hawk-like enthusiasm. They spend one evening way too early in the process arguing long and hard about Riot's new rules for deciding tiebreaks now that each team is limited to sending only one player to the event. "When all of KT gets voted on," Kyungho says, as if it's already happened and he's just reporting the facts, "you guys all agree that I should be the one to go, right?"

Sehyeong shakes his head, mock-admiringly. "If it was a competition for all-star ego—"

"You'd win," Wonseok jokes, and Sehyeong pretends to throw his keyboard from across the room.

It's a moot point, anyway: No Korean midlaner would ever win over Faker, and as for Smeb, he's muscled out by Marin, who has nostalgia on his side. Despite Bang's big news, Deft makes out like a bandit with both Korea and China voting for him. Kyungho whines about the results on Facebook and is roundly made fun of by Sehyeong and Jongin, who find his hurt feelings hysterical. 

Never one to give up a chance at a joke, OGN set up a guerilla street date for Faker and Smeb. It takes a whole day of filming, and Kyungho comes back exhausted, eyes swollen despite his makeup and reluctant to spill any of the details. "Are you coming down with something?" Dongbin says. 

"Because if you are, we're going to quarantine you in a box on the porch," Coach Lee jokes, and makes a face when Kyungho slumps off without a reaction. 

OGN uploads the video two days before the All-Star events begin, while Hyukkyu is at the airport with the other Korean team members being interviewed and poked and prodded. When he gets a moment to himself, Hyukkyu watches it on his phone, hunched over in a chair in the airport lobby, a comfortable distance away from Sanghyeok, who is drinking coffee and being talked at by Gyeonghwan. It opens, of course, on OGN tricking Sanghyeok into meeting at a game arcade, where he and Kyungho waste a solid two hours, cut, collapsed, and fast-forwarded into tiny minute-long bites, trying to work the claw machine. When Kyungho wins a stuffed mouse, he hands it to Sanghyeok, who tosses it to one side over Kyungho's squawking. "I need to win my own," he says, but fails miserably and spends the rest of the date resentfully holding Kyungho's prize under one elbow.

The bulk of the video, though, is a stylized interview in a coffee shop, with Kyungho and Sanghyeok gamely ignoring the cameras as they pretend to have a meaningful conversation for their fans. "You know," Kyungho says, fiddling with the cardboard sleeve of his coffee cup, an overripe drama theme playing behind him, "there's been some rumors that you're leaving LCK."

"I've heard the rumors," Sanghyeok says. 

"Right, right, you search yourself all the time," Kyungho mumbles, and then looks ready to die. 

"You search for my interviews too?" Sanghyeok jokes.

"There's a lot of them," Kyungho says, playing along. "I spend 14 hours a day reading them." 

"That's why you're my best friend," Sanghyeok says, with the stiffness of a man fed a line, but Kyungho grins anyway. 

For a little while, they trade off back and forth: about the rumors that Faker is going to NA, American food, a joke about Bengi boosting SKT to victory from China, memories from last year's All-Star event. At the mention of Barcelona, an editor off-stage prods Sanghyeok, "Ask him if he'll miss not feeding you this year." Sanghyeok, maybe mishearing, maybe thinking he only has to paraphase, glances up at Kyungho with a careful smile and says, "Will you miss me?" 

Kyungho starts, almost upturning his own cup. "What?" 

"Will you miss me?" Sanghyeok repeats. "If I go."

"Where?"

"Wherever." Sanghyeok puts the stuffed mouse Kyungho won on the table, like it's a prop, and gestures to it meaninglessly. "Like NA."

Kyungho exhales. The OGN camera, always prone to favorites and, this year, a friend to Kyungho and KT, is trained closely on him. Without his glasses and with his hair gelled up, Hyukkyu can see his eyes clearly: wide, hunted, the face of a man caught out of position and about to get styled on for his mistake. 

"You know, I've never beaten you," Kyungho says eventually. "I told myself, 2017 was going to be it, I was going to win. Our team was strong. I believed in them. But we lost again. That terrible mountain SKT that I wanted to conquer, I still haven't climbed it. Hey, Faker," he says, jerking his head up, "if you leave, what is the next mountain? Where do I go from here?"

Behind Sanghyeok's shoulder, at the next table over, Hyukkyu can see the flash of a hand holding a piece of paper, a glimpse of a producer realizing they've gone too far down a rabbit hole and unsure of how to end it without ruining their footage. Unaware of the minor crisis of production they're causing, Sanghyeok leans in closer to Kyungho, blinking steadily. "If I went to NA, I would still aim for worlds," he says. "If you made it, we would meet there."

"But it wouldn't be the same," Kyungho says fiercely. "You're Faker. You belong in Korea. You can't leave."

Sanghyeok shrugs. "Bengi left," he says, as if that were an answer. 

In the pause that comes after, Hyukkyu, like everyone else, fills in the names: _and so did Duke, and before him Marin, and before him Easyhoon, and Impact, and Piglet, and Mandu._ It's cinematic, almost scripted, to give OGN time to break into prepared footage of all the scattered ex-SKT members, only Kyungho ruins it. Blindly, he grabs at the air between them, like he already sees Sanghyeok leaving and needs to grab a hold of him before he goes. When Kyungho comes up empty, he tries to disguise the motion and reaches for the stuffed animal on the table between them, catching one of its stupidly outstretched paws in between his fingers, squeezing so hard he seems ready to tear the prize apart by its seams.

This is a moment too genuine for camera, and yet it stays ruthlessly trained on the two of them, catching Kyungho's eyes reddening as he says, "Don't go. I'm still running. Just one more year." Then, voice breaking, "Wouldn't you miss _me_?"

Sanghyeok says nothing. Instead, he awkwardly tries to tug the stuffed animal away from Kyungho. When it doesn't budge, he cocks his head to one side, as if Kyungho were a bizarre rune and mastery combination he'd never seen. Then—and after he gets on the plane, after he tweets Kyungho, _congrats you're the new cpt jack now_ , after he gets to his hotel and curls up under a blanket, his phone shining in the dark, this is the part Hyukkyu will rewind to watch over and over—Sanghyeok reaches for Kyungho's right hand. Lifts it, finger by finger, and grasps it in his. Unnaturally, his wrist almost twisted, as if he were unused to holding hands and was feeling it out by touch alone. The light catches the metal of his glasses, the soft curve of his cheek, made smooth and white by makeup and good lighting. He is, for a second, beautiful, bathed in late afternoon sun as he regards Kyungho and slowly, deliberately, nods his head. 

And if Hyukkyu holds his breath, if he wills it, if he pauses the video, as he does every time he rewatches it, so that it stays here, frozen in time, he can make this moment last—into the end of this offseason, into 2018, into forever: the promise of Smeb, the legacy of Faker, both of them preserved at their best, like insects in amber.

Instead, in the next second, as if suddenly remembering they are being filmed, Kyungho snatches his hand away. He clears his throat, forces out a trembling laugh, too loud to be anything but fake, and asks, "So how was my acting? Better than Wangho's?"

Sanghyeok stares back at him, uncomprehending. The moment is over. OGN cues bright, cheery background music, intent on sweeping away the awkwardness. Another glimpse of something flapping, a producer whispering something at Sanghyeok, who cocks his head to one side. "Yes, good," he says indifferently. 

Kyungho, who has almost regained his composure, probes, "Just good?"

Sanghyeok pauses for just a moment too long. Just when Kyungho opens his mouth, no doubt to dig himself further into a grave of embarrassment, a smile breaks out onto Sanghyeok's face. "Top," he says in English, rocking a little in his chair. "Top actor in the top lane."

They look at each other, both smiling, Faker satisfied by his bad joke and Smeb satisfied by the praise. The camera pulls away but pauses at mid-distance, as if waiting for them to wave at it, acknowledge the audience for whom they've supposedly conducted this spectacle. They don't, lost in a silent conversation that no one else, not even the camera, is privy to. The camera hesitates, zooms in on the stuffed mouse, and fades out. 

And so, the video ends. 

 

 

 

 

 

At All-Star Tokyo, Hyukkyu spends most of his off-stage time hiding behind Gyeonghwan, who takes the mantle of being team captain with a grace that could only be matched by Beomhyun, who seems to take the international disappointment at Smeb's absence personally and determinedly charms the casters, all of Team Fire, and most of Team Ice in the process. Clearlove, on the verge of retirement, is this year's xPeke, wildly lauded by the crowds wherever he goes, but he frowns when Hyukkyu jokes about it. "Maybe if I had made the roster for worlds," he frets, always hard on himself, and Hyukkyu doesn't bring it up again. At the bidding of OGN and Tuwan, they host a city tour together, mostly in broken English, and Tian Ye messages them in a group chat after it airs, complaining that it's unfair they get to have all this fun without him. _Love-_ ge _stole my spot!!!!!_ he writes, and for a second Hyukkyu forgets what team he's on, and then remembers, and then, like a cold sweat, remembers it's offseason and there are no teams until the season starts. 

Fnatic having been absent at both 2016 and 2017 worlds, All-Star is also the first time Hyukkyu sees Martin in person in two years. Split up between the two teams, they don't see much of each other, but end up facing each other during a round of 1v1, where the camera lovingly follows them as they walk off-stage, Martin's arm around his shoulder, laughing. The next time they get a chance to talk, it's backstage waiting for Team EU versus Team LCK. When Martin approaches where the Korean team is clustered around the bottled water, Gyeonghwan and Beomhyun both trade glances at each other and, like chaperones at a group date who've noticed two young charges hitting it off, tactfully pull Sanghyeok and Chanyong off to one side to give them privacy.

Without a translator, they're limited to pleasantries, _how is Tokyo, how is your family, will we have time for dinner, it's too bad the time is so short._ They have a heated discussion, mostly consisting of the names of champions and items, about the newest patch and the viability, once again, of Ivern in competitive play. Martin tries to say something about xPeke that Hyukkyu can't make heads or tails of, but Hyukkyu nods anyway, and is rewarded with a smile. As usual, they run down the list of competitive ADCs, both exchanging expressions of mixed emotions about Piglet, before lingering on Bang. 

"But Hyukkyu, you're not retiring, right?" Martin says suddenly. 

Hyukkyu blinks in surprise. "Why are you ask?" 

"'Why?'" Martin repeats, eyes wide. "Because I want to play against you in the next worlds finals, of course, and if you retire I won't get that chance."

When he and Martin had first met, Hyukkyu had been much shorter, but it's been at least three years and Hyukkyu has shot up. In any case, right now, Martin is seated, holding on to Hyukkyu's right hand as they talk, swinging it slightly with the rhythm of his words. For once, Hyukkyu seems to tower over Martin, able to look down at Martin's upturned, anxious face. 

It occurs to Hyukkyu suddenly that he could boil down all the pro-gamers he knows to one or two shared traits—determination, hunger, crippling self-doubt coupled with a weakness for flattery. Even Smeb, the best toplaner in the world, had moments where he was hollowed out, where his motivation to keep going flickered and faded. Even Faker, the best player in the world, could be moved by someone telling him, _you are my motivation._ Hyukkyu thinks of Kyungho, eyes glassy and on the verge of tears, as he looked up at Sanghyeok and said, _if you leave, what else is there?_ It was a degree of vulnerability Hyukkyu had never allowed himself; or, maybe, just an example of Kyungho running his mouth whenever he was given a chance. Hyukkyu would be too embarrassed to ever beg someone to stay behind just for him—as if he were more important than Faker's career, or the entire NA region. But it's been a year with KT Rolster, and Hyukkyu's picked up a little from every team he's been with. It's the best and worst thing about Kyungho, that he always plays with his heart on his sleeve.

"Martin," Hyukkyu says, tightening his fingers around Martin's hand. "You look up me now? Still think good?" 

"Of course I still think you're good," Martin says, grinning. He squeezes Hyukkyu's fingers, two quick pulses. "I'll always look up to you. World's best ADC, no question."

"But no world champion. Not like Junsik." When Martin furrows his brow, Hyukkyu thinks back carefully on what he said and shakes his head at himself. "Bang wins world, so better?" 

Martin nods. "Of course Bang is good. But just because SKT won worlds doesn't mean he's the best. He's no Deft." He flashes Hyukkyu another grin and punches Hyukkyu lightly on the arm. "And not as good as Rekkles."

They lapse, for once, into comfortable silence, having said all they needed to say to each other. A few minutes later, Team NA and Team LMS finally wrap up their game, and Martin gets up, gently nudges Hyukkyu with his shoulder, _time to get on stage_. He's gotten fatter, Hyukkyu thinks, or maybe just bigger, growing out from the skinny boy he was when he was just starting out on Fnatic. It's been a hard year for Rekkles, and in the lines around Martin's eyes, the downward turn of his mouth when he isn't consciously arranging his face, Hyukkyu can see the tribulations of Fnatic's spring split, the roster troubles, those anxious months after not qualifying for worlds where Rekkles, too, was contemplating retirement. But when he smiles, Hyukkyu still sees him in 2014: a flash of white teeth, perfect hair, firm handshake, adoration in every word. 

They make their way to the stage to start the familiar process of connecting their peripherals, arranging the booth, adjusting their chairs. As he unwraps his keyboard, Hyukkyu hears, suddenly, Sehyeong's voice, familiar and annoying, like a hand on his shoulder _: Hyukkyu, this is a skin too_. He flexes his hand as if he can feel it wrap around him, and pictures that awkward, quiet kid Martin first met, all mechanics and no confidence, who would cry when things went wrong, who knew nothing about losing and only vaguely knew what it meant to want to win. He'd stopped being that boy, or at least he thinks he has. Still, whether he knew it or not, that boy was a rock too, a boulder rolling down the same mountain as Bae Junsik, a distant peak Martin Larsson had used as a landmark, a lucky pebble Gu Seungbin had picked up and smoothed over time and time again for comfort, the stone in Tian Ye's still-stiff slingshot. 

Brick by brick, this is what has built Hyukkyu. This is who he is now. Across the stage, Martin is peering curiously at the underside of his mouse, checking for dust. Across an ocean, Junsik is probably huddled in a chair watching a stream on his computer, maybe even with his former teammates, ready to make fun of Hyukkyu over a text. Seungbin is a ghost in the machine, somebody's bedtime story of what could have been and what might be. Gwanhyung and Tian Ye are twin projections overlaid on Beomhyun, who automatically flashes a reassuring smile at Hyukkyu when he sees him glancing over. When Beomhyun mouths, _ready?_ Hyukkyu can see in him Sehyeong's pointing hand and smirking face, the way he'd always settle cross-legged into his chair before staring expectantly at Hyukkyu. He is surrounded by his different selves, made whole and old and new. _You're always so slow_ , he hears in a chorus of their voices. _Hurry up. We have a game to play._

He sits down, logs into his client and smiles. 

He is still running, and he is not yet ready for it to end. 

**Author's Note:**

> Dearest chronoshift, you said you adored all four characters and would enjoy any fic about any of them, but I could only manage to make myself write about three of them: Deft, Faker, and Smeb, and the latter two only as supporting characters. I'll try harder for next time. Since you wrote your Yuletide letter, so much has changed in the pro-LOL world (I'm sure if I asked you today what you would have asked for, it would be Huni/Faker, or even Huni/Faker/Peanut, and probably Kuro/Spirit, but alas!). While I may be an inconsequential part of that world, your friendship has been an invaluable part of mine. Happy birthday, and I hope this year brings you happiness, joy, success, and full footage of KurO and Spirit's wedding ceremony.


End file.
